Urbino Project 2011

The best eyewitness to Urbino’s storied history is the Piazza Repubblica, which has witnessed the march of time from the Renaissance through Fascism, the Cultural Revolution and today’s army of partying students.

URBINO, Italy – Near midnight, a group of young men spills into the Piazza Repubblica, stumbling and shuffling over a cobblestone roadway. They gather near a fountain ringed with beer and wine bottles emptied over the last few hours. The leader pauses, then raises a vuvuzela—the infernal horn made famous by the World Cup in South Africa—and blasts staccato notes into the air. His ever-growing horde cheers wildly, as if his vuvuzela was spraying money, enough to make the college degrees many of them just earned moot.

Visitors who come to this piazza after 10 p.m. might think it only serves as a party platform for drunken University of Urbino students. But twelve hours before that, this square hosted middle-aged and elderly people calmly sipping espresso and nibbling croissants. Fifty years earlier, a burgeoning leftist student movement held protests here. Ten years before that residents gathered to watch the city’s first TV  together.  And two and a half centuries before that, this city’s heart began to beat.

For generations the Piazza Repubblica  has served as the social linchpin and historical stage of the city.

Though it’s a staple of present-day Urbino, the Piazza Repubblica has deep historical roots. It began to shift towards its current form in 1700, when Urbino-born Giovanni Albani became Pope Clement XI. The new Pope funneled resources towards the development of Urbino, concentrating on the Piazza Repubblica. His efforts worked, and the Piazza thrived. Decades later, in the 1800s, a pair of theatres further enhanced the area, and an arcade was built on the edge of the square to shelter visitors from the elements.

The Pope’s interest in the Piazza Repubblica is easy to explain, given the importance of piazzas in Italian culture. The Roman Empire, for instance, laid out its  towns where two main roads met, creating natural piazzas.  In Siena, the city wards have competed in Palio di Senia—a horse race—since 1656  using the Piazza del Campo as a staging ground to keep historic rivalries alive and the people paradoxically united through competition.

Similarly,  Urbino’s own Piazza Repubblica is located on a hill at a convergence of four roads, two going up and two going down. Bars and restaurants ring the area, sporting names like Caffé Degli Archi and Ristorante San Giovanni. The neon signs of some buildings provide a counterpoint to the ancient architecture. Other establishments favor a simpler approach: one below-street-level pizza joint is advertised by a painted black and white sign that simply reads, “PIZZA.” Anyone over six feet tall has to duck to enter the place, and it’s known to many American visitors as the “Pizza Hole.”

The Piazza wakes up early; cleanup crews and breakfast eaters are out by 7 a.m.. Trucks soon arrive, enough of them to obscure the fountain from view, and workers deliver food and drink to the restaurants. Buses and a tour-giving tram, which looks it belongs in a Disney park, use the Piazza as a drop-off and pickup area.  Cars and motorcycles also weave about. Any drivers who pass through must pick their way around tourists and residents.

To Urbino residents, the Piazza Repubblica’s importance is huge. Gamba Stefano, a middle-aged man who runs a shirt store just off the Piazza, said that for sixty years his family has relied on the Piazza to funnel customers in. The store targets students, who hang out in the Piazza, and tourists, who instinctively gravitate towards it.

The crowd goes through a slow but noticeable change over the course of the day: people of all ages are out from the morning until the evening, at which point the older crowd, which favors white wine and cappuccinos, gives way to students, who favor giant bottles of Peroni and Birra Moretti.

Opinions on the evening crowd vary. A gray-haired taxi driver said through an interpreter, “The students are loud and cause problems. It’s difficult to park, and broken glass is everywhere. And the bathrooms are closed, so there’s piss everywhere.”

But Carmen Staccioli, who works with her husband at their bar, Café Deggli Archi, recognizes the economic value of the nightlife. “We [cater to] the students,” she said. “Without them, we’d have less work.”

Come June, many of those students use the piazza for graduation celebrations. Once they take their last exam, each graduate dons a laurel crown, then heads out to the fountain for champagne and picture-taking. They tend to drink a little, talk a little, drink some more, talk some more, and then move to another area of the Piazza for more pictures and drinking.

Friends arrive. Groups blend together. The cycle repeats until nighttime, at which point the crowd becomes huge, amorphous and loud. The noise culminates when the vuvuzela-wielder arrives. Chants and dancing spontaneously break out, though the only dance move many of the young men display consists of hopping up and down with a fist in the air.

Despite all the drinking, the bars themselves are surprisingly empty. Instead of sitting inside with only a few people, the students celebrate outside with an entire city.
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URBINO, Italy – In the college town of Urbino, the new and old clash together everywhere you look – quaint grandparents and rowdy students gather together in the Piazza; modern construction cranes tower over centuries-old churches, and hybrid vehicles roll through cobblestone streets made for horses. In this eternal juxtaposition between youth and history, one man fights for the side of history with the best weapon he knows – art.

Duccio Marchi, born in Urbino in 1958, is one of the last speakers of Dialetto Urbinate, the historic language of the area. Though Italy’s many dialects were officially replaced by the literary Tuscan dialect after the national unification of Italy in the 1860s, local dialects were still used in everyday speech until the adoption of television in the 1960s. But Duccio doesn’t just speak Dialetto Urbinate – he writes his music in it.

“I’ve been writing songs in Italian for 30 years,” Duccio says from an outdoor table at the Bar Del Teatro, or Theater Bar, which is nestled in the side of Urbino’s main performance center. “And in dialect for 10 years.” At 53, his sunken eyes speak of experience, though it is easy to tell he is in excellent physical shape for his age.

Italian Dialects, or Regional Italian, are variations of the Italian language which were spoken until modern Italian gradually became the standard language throughout the nation in the mid-20th century. But a national standardized language also has its drawbacks.

“People find it hard to understand that in dialect, you can express more things than in Italian” Duccio says. “The schools, for a lot of years, especially in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, said that dialect wasn’t Italian language – it was something different. So they told people not to speak it.”

Duccio admits that dialect throughout the country won’t be around forever. “Yes, I think that it is going toward extinction simply because there are just a few people who speak it. I’m the only one to write songs in Dialetto Urbinate, though people write in dialect in Rome, Naples, Milan; big cities like that.” But he is also hopeful that his language will last longer than he will. “I think that my songs are everlasting. I think and I hope so” he says.

But Duccio’s songs are not simply written in the dialect of the area – they are intrinsically intertwined with Urbino itself. “My songs talk about the city, the streets, the places, but also the people” he says. As an example, Duccio mentions a song about selfish landlords here in the walled city, renting apartments to students at exorbitant prices. Though he speaks about his song with a lighthearted laugh, you can see the seriousness in his eyes. “I sing about things concerning these people and this place.”

Urbino, considered the worldwide center of cultural civilization during the renaissance period, has since morphed into a city of disposable youth. A majority of the citizens inside the city walls are students, studying at the University of Urbino, who take up residency until graduation – usually a mere 3 years. “Inside the actual city walls, there are maybe only 15 or 20 local families left,” said Dr. Eduardo Fischera, who has lived in Urbino for a majority of his life. “The rest are students who rent out apartments.”

Fabio Massaro, 19, studies language at the University of Urbino. “I don’t use dialect often, only sometimes when talking about home” he says. “But we do have cheers, or songs, that we still chant. We had a cheer in dialect that we yelled at my brother’s graduation last week.”

When asked about what the students think of his music, Duccio is convincingly optimistic. “Yes, I think they like this kind of music. They started using instruments again that they haven’t used for a long time. Music is becoming more appreciated by the young people.”

Duccio can claim undisputed credit for at least three young people’s love of music. “I have three sons, big sons, and I always sing in dialect to them,” he says with a smile on his face. “One studies in New York, and when we meet on Skype, we play something together in dialect.”

Duccio is somewhat of a local celebrity here in Urbino – most of the locals know his name, and many have seen him perform. But when asked about his fans, he is quick to mention that he isn’t in is for fame or money. “I don’t care if I become famous or not, I just like singing” he says.

The singer doesn’t have to worry about his music paying the bills, though. A man of many trades, he is a family doctor at the area’s hospital. Besides working and singing, Duccio still finds time to perform in the local theater – always in dialect, of course.

“Italian theater has it’s origin in dialect theater. We use the dialect to make people laugh. The dialect itself makes people laugh” Duccio says. He performs classic comedic musicals, complete with harpsichord accompaniment and renaissance-style outfits. The scripts talk about timeless Urbino landmarks, such as the piazza and basilica.

“Right now I’m working on a text from 1513. I’m translating it into dialect, and we will be performing it in a year.” The 500 year old production was performed in the Palazzo Ducale in the early 16th century, and now, half a millennia later, is being revived by Duccio. He offers me an invitation to some see the play – if I happen find myself in town next summer, that is.

When modern art meets the Renaissance in Urbino, Italy, it’s difficult to decide what to make of graffiti. It is vandalism, or art?

URBINO, Italy – As you walk the cobblestone streets of Urbino, you see stories everywhere, in the historic buildings, in marble sculpture – and in the graffiti.

Even the birthplace of 16^th century Renaissance painter Raphael Sanzio has been marked by the aerosol paint better know in the streets of big modern cities like Los Angeles, New York and Milan.

An Urbino resident poses beside one of the city’s best known art pieces next to Raphael’s Madonna Col Bambino.

Although these illicit icons of the spray can are a lot less evident here, art students and locals take notice,  and differ on whether it’s art of vandalism.

Michele Fosella, 27, is a graphic design major at the Industrial Art Institute in Urbino (ISIA), who believes that without graffiti, the city would lack character.

“Every city needs this type of intervention because cities are meant to change and evolve,” Fosella says.

Although unwelcome in an ancient environment that thrives off of art tours,  graffiti has deep European roots. Earliest examples date back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, where the Latin term “graffito” describes an image or lettering scratched, painted or marked on property.

One of the most significant pieces in Urbino is of Argentina’s soccer player Diego Armando Maradona, posing with a smug smile and his number 10 jersey. A symbol of Naples, the team he played with for seven years, and a controversial figure in Italy due to failed drug tests that led to his expulsion from the 1994 World Cup in the United States.

The Maradona originally garnished three walls in Urbino, beginning in October 2006 on Via Porta Maia, a small boulevard leading to the home of a man known as his James Bond-inspired alias, “The Real Mister Q.”

The ancient city as an urban zoo, where Renaissance history contrasts with modern art.

In July 2010, Mayor Franco Corbucci had city officials conceal the image with a thin layer of plaster. On a late evening a month later, Mr. Q removed the plaster with warm water and a rough sponge, his friends across the street watching for police.

“People fear new things,” says Mr. Q, a chemistry major at the University of Urbino. Mr. Q asked that his identity not be disclosed because of his illegal salvaging of that Maradona graffiti. Residents didn’t see its “fresh and shiny” beauty, he says, “because it was on a clean wall.”

Mr. Q says that images like the Maradona “do not express rebellion, yet inspire people to think.”

Not every resident in Urbino appreciates ideas shared on walls. Stefania Bigarini, 42, a shopkeeper at an electronics store, considers the second Maradona a site of vandalism where it stands on the wall of her property. It is beside a small, secluded sidewalk residents call La Scaletta.

“I have seen it off of Via Rafaello and it is a great image, but not where it has been placed,” Bigarini says. She says she rarely sees tourists taking photos of it, as they do of the first Maradona.

It is illegal to paint graffiti in Italy on private and public property. In Urbino, the state allows a perpetrator who is caught the decision to remove the graffiti with support from personal funding, or to pay a bill for removal by city authorities.

In 2008, Italian Prime Minster Silvio Berlusconi proposed to strengthen laws against graffiti. Fines were raised more than 10-fold, to €30,000, plus prison sentences of 40 days, for defacing historic monuments and private property.

“This is my private property and I work hard to keep everything clean,” says Bigarini, who supports the stricter graffiti laws.

The art students of Urbino tend to have a different perspective. Jacopo Pietroni, an art history major at Beni Culturali, supports graffiti if it does not degrade ancient scenery.

“If the art is a form of expression from youth culture, graffiti should be done as long as it does not spoil the city,” Pietroni said through an interpreter.

In a way, graffiti pieces like the Maradona have become a part of the city. Tourists from around the world photograph the image of the soccer star dressed in Super Mario red and blue, an image Mr. Q says has become one of the most tagged with Urbino on Flickr, a photo sharing website.

“Urbino is so small and the artist was strategic in his decision,” he says of its magnetism. “People from over 30 countries have photographed the Maradona.”

The third Maradona stencil can no longer be seen, covered in grey plaster and replaced with simple black graffiti tags on a large wall behind a bar on Via San Domenico.

Accademia di Belle Arti student Elena Bartolucci, 20, labels graffiti as “beautiful” when it does not offend or express vulgarity in its imagery.

“It would be nice to have a designated area in Urbino, rather than having someone you don’t know paint your house,” Bartolucci says through an interpreter.  “As long as the graffiti is not painted on the Palazzo Ducale, it’s okay.”

Bartolucci believes that everything is potentially artistic if it improves aspects of life.

“At the end of the day, in regards to artistic expression, Raffaello and graffiti are all the same,” she says. “Being in a city of art, it is inevitable.”

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It’s not easy making films in the land of legendary filmmakers.

URBINO, Italy – In the early 1960s, Italy was known throughout the world for cinema with such directors as Fellini and Rossellini. Now, on most nights, the smaller movie houses in Italy have projectors flickering Italian movies few people are watching. Much of the younger audience is looking to Hollywood blockbusters for entertainment rather than homegrown Italian films.

In Urbino, the story is no different. Many of the students in this college town would rather jump on a bus to satisfy their cinema fix, going to the bigger cities where there are more selections and bigger movie theaters. The two remaining cinemas in town, Nuova Luce and Cinema Ducale, both of which are on distribution contracts, are changing the type of movies they show to more America films and Italian blockbusters, in hopes of drawing more of an audience to keep from closing. Still, many nights the theatres remain empty. Part of the problem lies with bigger Italian film companies creating movies that mirror Hollywood because they believe it will bring in more box office revenue.

“The bigger production companies think that the only cinema we want to see is just entertainment where we can shut off our brains,” said Andrea Laquidara, an independent filmmaker in Urbino. “The bigger productions are much more Hollywood like. This is the big problem. We could imitate our quality of the past, but we are imitating Hollywood.”

Laquidara, who has lived in this ancient walled city for 13 years, has produced numerous documentaries, a feature length film, “The Bluff,” and several short films that run shorter than 40 minutes.

Laquidara started filmmaking at 17 after watching several classic Italian films, and realizing that it could be more than just entertainment. Laquidara bought a camera and searched for story ideas in Urbino, teaching himself as he went.

“Movies can speak as philosophy, psychology, and so many things,” said Laquidara.

Filmmakers like Laquidara face a number of obstacles getting their films produced. Like all independent cinema, breaking out of the cookie cutter style of Hollywood and still being a successful filmmaker is not easy. For every Fellini there are many who are never remembered.

It doesn’t matter if the filmmaker is Italian or American; one of the biggest obstacles independent filmmakers face is finding money to get their film off the ground, said Laquidara. Filmmakers have to use whatever money they can find to produce their films because there are few subsidies from the film companies. They also have to find their own actors and resources.

However, being an independent filmmaker means having more freedom because the film is based entirely on your own ideas and the project is completely your own. This allows for more creativity and flexibility in both the filming and editing process, he says.

Roberto Danese, a film critic and professor at the University of Urbino, agrees that money is one of the biggest obstacles for any filmmaker.

“The problem is the business behind film,” Danese said. “Good ideas don’t correspond to financial support. And in Italy this is a big problem, because the government and all the public institutions can’t sustain all the arts.”

In the United States, independent filmmakers have to compete with the bigger studios to get their films shown. For Italians, there is the added problem of trying to compete with American cinema as a whole.

Italy’s film production is different from that of many other countries. In France, for example, there is a screen quota on how many American films can be shown in ratio to national films. In Italy, there are no restrictions on American film imports.

American films dominate the Italian market. U.S film imports account for roughly 60 percent of all movies shown. Only 25 percent are national films, according to a study by Indiana University using ticket sales in 2006. (PDF LINK TO STUDY)

Laquiara explained that the majority of the films shown in Italy are imported from America because the Italian government and bigger production companies believe, inaccurately in his opinion, that Hollywood-style movies are the ones that Italians want to see.

According to an article in Italian Vogue in 2010, more than 60 percent of moviegoers have seen an American movie, 27 percent an Italian one and the remaining 10 percent films from other countries.

Laquidara argues that it is difficult for many of the top Italian independent directors such as Pietro Marcello and Alina Marazzi to get their movies to the Italian people.

Part of the problem in Italy, said Laquidara, comes from the government and its lack of subsides to the local filmmakers. Prime Minster, Silvio Berlusconi, is a businessman who owns the most powerful media companies, and is also the top elected official, with the power to regulate public media. Berlusconi has a lot of control of what films receive public funds. Much of the money goes to films that follow the Hollywood plot and have a better chance of making money.

“We had a good period of cinema with directors like Fellini, and now there are a lot of new filmmakers with potential, but the government doesn’t support the culture,” Laquidara said. “Even if the audience is interested the independent films, the films can’t reach them.”

Another problem stems from the movies themselves. Danese explained that the filmmakers of today try to recreate movies in the style of an art-film movement of Italy’s postwar decade called neorealism rather than come up with their own creative ideas.

But not all. Some directors are receiving positive criticism for creating new and unique ways of editing so that their movies stick out compared to the rest. Danese believes this type of editing could propel a new movement with Italian cinema, and stop filmmakers from recreating the past.

“I hope Italian cinema forgets its past, so to create new ideas and new innovations. Maybe this type of cinema could be the future. Italian cinema now is not bad, but it could be so much better,” said Danese.

One example of this editing is Peter Marcello film, “The Mouth of the Wolf,” which has won numerous awards including Caligari Film Award. Marcello never saw an Italian film but drew upon original ideas, with editing that uses both continuity editing and clips of scenes that don’t involve the characters, to help move the story along.

Danese explained that this editing was the “cinematic mark of the film” because the editing is so different from the Hollywood style, where the audience is not supposed to notice editing.

In order to help create the next generation of filmmakers with new ideas and innovations, both Laquidara and Danese helped set up workshops and conferences with the Marche region to discuss film history and to teach aspiring young filmmakers how to create compelling movies.

Each semester, the workshops draw about 20 to 25 students. The students meet once a week for three hours or longer depending on what aspect of filmmaking they are learning that day. The classes feature two components. The first is the actual filmmaking process, including filming and editing. The second is learning how to analyze films, such as why a director chose a particular lighting or angle for a shot. After learning the basics, the students go out and make their own films.

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In the city known as the “Jewel of the Renaissance,” young artists find inspiration, but little support.

The setting sun gleams off Raphael’s face. He stands 14 feet tall in bronze on a huge granite pedestal at the top of Via del Raffaello, the steepest street in the small Renaissance town of Urbino, his birthplace.  World-renowned as one of the most important painters of the Renaissance, he still influences the city and its current artistic culture.

Down the cobblestone street in Raphael’s restored childhood home, Elvis Spadoni wears a wrinkled shirt and khakis that complement his shaggy hair and gruff beard. It is his first art show, and the house is packed with viewers captivated by this new artist’s traditional charcoal works. Each piece contains an aspect of Spadoni, as well as traces of Raphael and Michelangelo.

Elvis Spadoni – 31

Four years ago, Elvis had never painted or sculpted. But thanks to the local fine arts academy, L’Academia di Belle Arti he has begun to master classical art. He is becoming increasingly well-known in Urbino, but it has been a struggle.

Spadoni was born in Urbino in 1979 and grew up in Casinina, a rural town close by. He was named after the King of Rock and Roll; his father wanted his child to have a unique name and his mother was a Presley fan. Elvis grew up drawing and sketching, but only as a hobby. He studied at a specialized school in Remini that concentrated on the humanities.

“We studied Greek, Latin, philosophy. . .nothing about art, very little,” he says. “But I found this background very, very useful.”

After high school, at 18, Spadoni attended seminary. For the next nine years he studied and served the Catholic Church in Remini and Bologna.

During his time in seminary, he was bombarded by ideas, thoughts that would eventually find themselves on paper.

“I felt that it was my best way to communicate, but only sketch,” he says.

Many of these sketches weren’t serious, but occasionally he produced a drawing that hinted at more than just lead on a page.

By the time Spadoni was 27, he realized he was not happy. Something was missing.

“My fear inside, fear to live life free, make me think that my way was to become priest, to serve the Church,” he says.

Within the course of two days of intense reflection, Spadoni left the seminary.

Elvis tries to include a self-portrait of some kind in all his works.

“We have to be what we are,” he says, referring to the inner turmoil he confronted at the end of his seminary days.  With that realized, he returned to Urbino to start anew.

After passing an application exam, Spadoni began his studies at L’Academia di Belle Arti. The fine arts academy, build around a renovated convent, focuses on traditional arts as well as new and evolving media like video. Students of the academy, who range in age from 19 to more than 50, have close interaction with the professors.

“The contact with the professors is much more immediate, much more personal,” says Sebastiano Guerrera, who has been at the academy for 28 years, as a student, professor of paint, and now as the director.

“I can remember all my students by name. It’s a much more direct personal relationship than somewhere like Rome or another big city,” he says.

Walking around L’Academia di Belle Arti, Spadoni appears completely at home. The hallways boast an impressive array of student work, but around every corner is one of Spadoni’s creations.

“This is mine,” he says, motioning to a small bronze statue of Hercules as he walks down the main hall of the academy.  Hunched over, the mythical hero stares from underneath the mantle of the Nemean lion that he famously hunted and slayed. Spadoni points to Hercules’s right index finger, which is missing its tip. Spadoni’s own finger is cut off at the same point, the result of a childhood accident with the gears of a honey-making machine.

“My favorite subject is myself. I’ve done a lot of self-portraits and even when I paint someone else I give him my likeness,” Spadoni wrote in a short essay about his artwork. “I think my style is narrative. My ambition, my desire is to use the painting, the drawing, the sculpture, to tell something.”

Continuing through the halls of the academy, he points out many more featured pieces along the corridors, until coming to a large canvas.

“This is my first painting for the academy,” he remarks nonchalantly. The image depicts Spadoni waking in a simple modern bedroom, and behind him is a replication of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam.” The work is titled “Faithful to the Earth” and reflects the simultaneous distance and intimacy of man and God as a simple, everyday reality.

“To be faithful to the earth means to be faithful to the heart,” he says calmly. Spadoni resonates a similar simplicity and humility, yet the passion in his eyes is unmistakable.

“He’s a very diligent student,” says Marie Calajoe, a professor of technical languages at the Academy and the University of Urbino. “Whatever he does, he does it with maximum dedication. It’s as if he was born again and he’s discovering everything for the first time. He’s so open and absorbent in everything that’s around him.”

That diligence won him a six-week scholarship in New York through the Columbus Citizens foundation. He will be studying at various art schools around the state.

“For me, everything happens in New York; it’s like Disneyland,” Spadoni says.

Even though he is beginning to see the fruits of his labor, the past four years at the academy have not been easy for Spadoni. He continually struggles with whether he should work while studying at the Academy. Spadoni relates the burden of having a second job to the biblical story of David receiving Saul’s armor; David could barely move and so decided he could fight better without it.

“Someone give me an armor, I often take this, but in time I understand that I fall if I keep this armor.”

After having several jobs over the years, Spadoni has decided that the best way for him to learn and grow as an artist is to focus solely on his studies.

“The struggle is to follow your path,” Spadoni says. He has begun to forge that path.

Despite leaving the Church four years ago, Elvis says that he feels even more religious now. He sums up his decision as a “faithful experience of salvation.”

“I think God’s will is according to your nature,” he said.

That nature seems to be one of great potential, one that is only beginning in the town of Raphael.

“Urbino is like a big painting,” Spadoni says, of the beauty of the landscape and architecture. Although he derives a lot of his influence from Michelangelo, Spadoni says that as he has gotten older his appreciation for Raphael has grown.  He says “the presence of Raphael” is always around and even though they are centuries apart, the two artists of Urbino have much in common.

“When I draw something like a face and an eye is crooked or the shading isn’t right and I have to do it over again, I think that centuries ago Raphael had the same problems.”

Spadoni is also beginning to see the same successes as his art style continues to evolve.

“I’m very interested in discovering a new way to relate to art languages, really like an old man observing a young man that is living his life.”

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See Grant’s Video “The Barber of Urbino”